For the first time since the star had drawn him into its red gaze, Ra Zacharia felt his hands shake.
Wait. The sound of an engine. For a second he thought it was the Elders’ ship, come early, but they would come as silently as the dark spaces between the stars, powered by strange equations, not earthly engines.
A car? Mark 23, finally accepting he must go and get the wheelchair girl? No, this car was not leaving, but coming closer.
Ra Zacharia stepped to the window, telling himself his steps were steady, his sight clear, that the halo of brightness was just the afternoon sunlight, another gift from the universe pouring gold across the world.
And there it was. A green Volkswagen was parked neatly by the stairs. The mute girl from the café hauled out a wheelchair.
Dizziness clawed at him. He resisted, forced the tumour’s tiger back in triumph. Because here at last was the offering he had always wished to give. How could he have doubted that the universe would not bring the perfect Sacrifice to him?
Chapter 84
ABC Local Radio, Gibber’s Creek, 11 November 1975
Whitlam urges peace but also to ‘maintain the rage’.
MOIRA
‘Drink this. You’ve had a shock.’ Moira tried to take the tea Nancy handed her. Her hand shook so much it spilled.
‘Here, let me take Gavin.’ Nancy scooped him up expertly. ‘I’m going to call the police. I’ll explain to them.’
‘Not in front of Gavin! You’ll frighten him.’ She put the tea down, and held out trembling hands. ‘Give him to me.’
‘Let me take him, Matron.’ The young woman stood at the door, concerned. She reached out, lifted Gavin to her shoulder, kissed his cheek, and smiled at Moira reassuringly. ‘You’ve had a shock. Drink your tea. Shut your eyes a minute. I’ll take him onto the veranda while Mrs Thompson calls the police. You don’t want him to see you upset.’
‘No. No, thank you. When did you get back?’
‘Just now. Just for a visit. I missed you so! Especially Gavin.’ She nuzzled his cheek. ‘Who’s a big lovely boy then? Who’s coming for a little walk?’
‘Police,’ said Nancy, and left for the office.
‘You won’t take him too far away?’ Moira asked anxiously.
‘Of course not. But we don’t want him upset, do we?’
Moira lifted her tea and sipped it, grateful for its sweetness, for kind friends who helped, were there miraculously when needed. ‘Thank you, Miss Forty.’
Chapter 85
ABC Local Radio, Gibber’s Creek, 11 November 1975
Tom Uren calls on supporters ‘not to let the candle fade’.
MATILDA
Matilda clung to her stick with one hand, the telephone receiver clutched in the other. Maxi lay at her feet, her head on one side as she tried to work out if what was happening concerned potential walks, biscuits, chicken scraps or a duty to defend her mistress.
‘Mum, I’m not going to drive you to Canberra tonight. Or even tomorrow morning.’ The voice through the receiver sounded scratchy, as it always did since the new automatic exchange.
‘Michael, this is important. The most important moment in our nation’s history. We have to be there!’
‘What do you plan to do? Storm the steps of Parliament House?’
She sat silent, the phone in her hand. For that had been exactly what she had assumed would happen, a demonstration larger even than the Vietnam moratorium marches, tens of thousands of Australians crying, ‘This shall not be done!’, forcing their way through police barricades, retaking the parliament that was theirs by right and by long and bitter battles. And she would be among them, an old woman leaning on her stick . . .
‘Mum, I don’t know what’s going to happen in Canberra,’ said Michael gently. ‘I’ll take you there if you really want to go. But I think you should stay here. Work on the election campaign. That’s what really matters now.’
Election. There would be an election. She had forgotten that, in her rage, lost in the memories of labour wars from seventy years ago. And if the people did storm Parliament House, what use would an old woman be?
Plan an election campaign? That was kind of Michael. But Michael knew as well as she did that Nicholas’s campaign would be run by those in Canberra.
For over a hundred years the owner of Drinkwater had owned true political power, could truly influence who represented Gibber’s Creek in Canberra, old Drinkwater first, and then herself, telling . . . no, advising employees who to vote for, even buying the local paper when its editor stubbornly refused to give the public the right information during World War II.
These days television wielded more power than a newspaper, and the national newspapers far more than ‘the local rag’.
The power she had today was exactly what her father — and her aunt and her fellow suffragettes — had fought for: a single vote for every man or woman across the land, including those whose skins were black and whose land was still being taken from them.
‘Thank you, darling,’ she said at last.
‘Mum, I’m sorry . . .’
‘No, you’re quite right. I wasn’t thinking. This is 1975, not 1895. Give the boys a kiss good night from me.’
She sat, the Doberperson in her lap, or rather one small portion of a Doberperson, the rest sprawled mostly over a sofa.
What now? Blood upon the wattle? Was that what she truly wanted? The words were as clear as if they came from outside the window, as if Lawson himself were declaiming them:
We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting
Of those that they would throttle;
They needn’t say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle.
Would there be blood on the wattle now?
There had been blood of battle spilled on Australia’s soil: at the poor, failed convict scuffle at Vinegar Hill; in the bloody ten-minute clash at Eureka and the hours of carnage afterwards. The burning of the riverboat and shearing shed in her father’s battle for a man’s right to strike and belong to a union; her father’s death for the cause. How many suffragettes had been bashed by drunken, laughing men as they sought signatures for the petitions that would eventually lead to votes for women?
The savage battles of the Depression had left wounded too, as friends and unionists tried to fight the police who evicted families behind in rent or mortgage payments.
Yet these had been scuffles, not war. Ironically the most blood shed in Australia had not been in political fights for justice, but in a real war, though no one called it that, when her great-uncles and their ilk had slaughtered her great-grandmother’s people, first to subdue them, then in retaliation for speared sheep and, finally, for sport.
It was just a joke, James had told her so long ago, when she’d reproached him for boasting about ‘killing a buck’. She had tried to believe him then, loving him, fascinated by him. She did not believe him now.
Yet this new nation of Australia, only seventy-four years old, had been created not by civil war, but through referenda and the ballot box. For seventy-four years its most passionate divisions had been settled the same way.
But this?
The Doberperson whined and licked her face. ‘Down! No, good dog. Good dog.’ Maxi unfolded off the sofa and padded off.
And what if the people did storm Parliament House? Whitlam would have to take control again, simply to restore order. So many other nations had had civil wars — indeed was there any major nation that had not?
Could it, would it, should it come to that?
Something large and slimy landed on her knee. The lamb bone from dinner three nights earlier, Maxi’s most cherished possession. What more could a dog give you than her favourite bone?
Matilda rubbed the velvet ears. She should turn on the wireless. Or that dratted television. As she grew older, she realised that loving this small portion of the landscape, home of so many of her ancestors, meant also loving each bit that was joined to it, and each that
was joined to that, till finally it took in the whole world.
But just now it was Australia that mattered most, this vast continent that wasn’t divided into many nations like Europe, Asia or Africa but, miraculously, felt that it was one.
She must ring Jed.
Chapter 86
ABC Local Radio, Gibber’s Creek, 11 November 1975
. . . as protesting crowds take to the streets across Australia . . .
SCARLETT
Scarlett lowered herself carefully out of the car, into her wheelchair. She had never felt quite whole without it since that incredible day almost seven years back when she got her first Thompson’s Industries motorised chair.
Perhaps Ra Zacharia was right, she thought numbly. She had subconsciously chosen not to leave her chair, just as Leafsong had consciously chosen not to speak. But today she wanted to. Needed to! Had to!
Emotion had returned. Hope, and with it, terror. The stairs rose before her. Impossible stairs.
The door opened.
She expected Mark. Instead Ra Zacharia looked down on her. He wore a kaftan in a plastic material that shone with whiteness. Only his face was grey.
‘You have come. I should have known. I should have trusted.’ He ran down to them, ignoring Leafsong, and seized the handle of the wheelchair. He heaved it up the first step.
Leafsong followed. Ra Zacharia stopped, Scarlett and her chair balanced on the step. ‘Only this one may enter here today,’ he said to Leafsong. ‘Only the perfect offering to the Elders.’
Offering? What did he mean? thought Scarlett dazedly as Leafsong shook her head, her big sandal-clad feet solid next to Ra Zacharia’s white shoes.
Ra Zacharia stared at Leafsong, implacable. ‘If you try to come inside too, I will turn you both away. Do you want this for your friend? To take away her only chance to walk?’
‘Can’t you cure Leafsong too?’
Ra Zacharia gazed down at Scarlett, his face impossible to read. ‘You know the answer to that as well as I do. I could say I could cure her dumbness. But that would be a lie, because no cure is needed. She can speak. Yes?’
Leafsong stared at him. At last she nodded.
‘The rest of her is too wrong to cure. The distortion runs too deep.’
‘No! Leafsong is . . . is beautiful.’ Scarlett turned to Leafsong. ‘I’m not going inside without . . .’ Too late. Her friend had turned, run down the steps and to the car. The gravel shrieked as it headed back towards the track.
Ra Zacharia looked at her. Was he a lion watching his cubs, or one gazing at zebra that would feed them? ‘You have come,’ he whispered. ‘I should have known. The very moment that I need you, at the minute I had almost given up hope. And you will walk and at last I will meet the future of humanity.’
He lugged her chair up the final step into the whiteness of the building.
Chapter 87
Telegram from Ms Julieanne Driscoll to Ms Jed Kelly, 11 November 1975
Tell me the news isn’t true query not in Australia exclamation mark ring me exclamation mark J xxx
JED
The phone shrilled. Relief surged like a tsunami. Scarlett, wanting to come home. Or having at least reached Sydney safely with Mrs Taylor . . .
‘Hello?’
‘Jed?’ Matilda’s dry-leaf voice shook like it was wind blown. ‘Have you heard the news?’
‘What news?’ Dread chilled her hands, her feet. Had Scarlett been run over? The car crashed?
‘The governor-general has dismissed the government.’
This day could not be happening. ‘But . . . how can he do that? He can’t.’
‘Possibly.’ The voice was firmer. ‘And yet he has. Kerr has given the prime ministership to Malcolm Fraser until an election can be held.’
‘He can’t do that,’ Jed repeated weakly.
‘I assure you this is not the first evidence of senile dementia. Impossible as it seems, Sir John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser and those behind them have staged a coup. You need to ring Nicholas. See what needs doing. Articles for the Gazette at least. A demonstration?’
‘I don’t . . .’
‘My father and his mates would have been storming Parliament House. I do not know what your generation will do, but you must do something.’
‘Matilda, I . . . There’s a problem with Scarlett. We . . . we quarrelled and she’s left. I need to find her . . .’
‘That girl is capable of looking after herself.’
‘I . . . I don’t know. She was upset.’
An engine. Jed looked out the window. Leafsong’s car! Thank goodness. Then she realised the passenger seat was empty.
‘Matilda, I’ll call you back. Leafsong’s here. As soon as I find Scarlett, I’ll call you back, then call Nicholas’s office.’
‘I may be on the phone. We need a headline for the Gazette.’
And the Gazette had a highly competent editor who would not be amenable to an owner interfering. Those days had passed. But surely Cheryl’s editorial fury would be as great as Matilda’s. Every thinking Australian must be outraged!
Impossible that a government elected only the previous year could be dismissed. This extraordinary government that had changed the nation so deeply and so well . . .
She shoved the sheer outrageousness to the back of her mind and ran out to Leafsong.
Chapter 88
ABC Local Radio, Gibber’s Creek, 11 November 1975
Even in England the days when a king or queen could appoint or dismiss a parliament are long gone. But suddenly, in Australia, we find that it may be legally possible here. The voice of one man, the governor-general, has dismissed a government elected by the Australian people.
SAM
It had been a long two days. Sam had slept little on the flight back to Australia. The world shuddered slightly around him, not quite real. He should have stayed the night in Sydney.
But he wanted to get home, to share all he had seen with Jed, who was so good at saying, ‘Wow!’ even when she had no idea why the generating capacity of photovoltaic panels varied from one maker to the next, and why that was so important . . .
He found himself nodding off near Yass, dreaming she sat next to him. The ute veered onto the verge. He stopped at a truck stop for instant coffee and a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, which anchored him to reality better than the weak coffee. He had just begun to drive again when the news came on the ute’s radio. Dismissal!
Surely his tired brain had misunderstood. It was . . . Sam struggled to find the word, kept coming back to the same one. Unreal. Not possible in the universe he had known.
Reality was solar panels, their shiny blackness harnessing the sun. It was the chocolate earth beneath your feet, Jed’s skin under his hands.
Yet the voice on the radio kept talking. Dismissal. Crowds gathering outside parliament, in the streets of every city . . .
Sam had known for years that much of the world’s thinking was outmoded. He had thought it would change, was changing. And he was helping it change. But now the most antique institution in the country, Australia’s tie to the British queen, had assumed control of the entire country, as surely as if Australia was a colony, just like it had been back with the First Fleet and poor mad George III.
Had the queen even known that this would happen? Had she sat at her toast and marmalade this morning and said, ‘Oh, by the way, Philip, darling, we are going to dismiss the government of Australia today’?
Sam shook his head to clear it. What the queen had said or known didn’t matter — unless, perhaps, she saw that what had been done in her name was wrong and ordered Whitlam reinstated. Somehow Sam couldn’t see that happening.
Nothing mattered now, except getting home. Sitting at the table with Jed and Scarlett, eating dinner, watching the moon rise . . . those were real. Important. Tomorrow, after he had slept, he could try to work out what insanity his country faced now.
His ute slid through the streets of Gibber’s Creek, almost empt
y now after the shops had closed, except for a few drinkers on the footpath near the pub, then onto the road for home. He was so intent he failed to notice the green Volkswagen speed past in the growing dimness till it braked sharply in his rear-vision mirror. He stopped also and reversed towards it.
Leafsong, at the wheel. Jed! Scrambling from the car, running to him . . .
‘Darling, what is it?’
Jed clung to him. ‘Scarlett’s gone. She was going to meet her mother. But I think she’s in trouble. She . . . left . . . we argued . . .’
Sam glanced at Leafsong. ‘What’s happening? Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jed’s voice was muffled against his shoulder. ‘Leafsong just appeared and waved me into her car. She has to be taking me to Scarlett.’
Sam turned to Leafsong. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.
Leafsong bit her lip.
‘Is she in trouble?’
Leafsong nodded.
‘Where? How?’
The girl shook her head, gestured, realised that no gesture was going to help explain this particular mess. She took a breath. A voice came out of her mouth, a frog’s faint croak. ‘Chosen of the Universe. Ra Zacharia . . . said . . . an offering . . . to the Elders.’
‘No! Why would she go there?’ cried Jed. ‘What about her mother?’
Leafsong stared, anguished, and shook her head.
‘It doesn’t matter why Scarlett went there. We need to get her.’ Sam debated the merits of Carol’s car and his ute. He trusted his car maintenance more. ‘Leafsong, squeeze in too. Jed, darling, it’ll be okay.’
‘No! You don’t understand! The aliens are supposed to be coming today! The aliens are the Elders.’
‘What!’
‘I was too upset to think about them today. All I could think of was Scarlett deciding to live with her mother. I had no idea she might go out there.’ She turned to Leafsong. ‘Did they kidnap her?’
If Blood Should Stain the Wattle Page 46
